News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 19.

Read the full edition

News and Notes.

By Editor

RELIGIOUS.

—The income of Trinity Church corporation last year was $550,000.

—Thirty-two wholesale firms in San Francisco have agreed to adopt the Saturday half-holiday.

—The Presbyterian Board of Home Missions last year started 195 new churches, and 380 Sunday-schools.

—Mr. J. F. Morton, a London merchant, offers to defray the whole expense of sending four missionaries to southwestern China, by the new opening through Burmah, and to support them there for three years.

—The Bishop of Western Michigan has set forth a special form of prayer to be used in each church in the diocese during the present interruption of travel and trade caused by the unhappy feeling existing among the wage workers.

—The Christian at Work, in a note on the opposition of the Harvard students to attendance at the chapel exercises in the morning, says: "It is not a good excuse for the Cambridge boy that he is not on speaking terms with his Maker, and prefers not to be present when his name is pronounced."

—The New York Observer says: "The bill now before the Legislature of this State, making Saturday afternoon a legal holiday, has every prospect of becoming a law. At the suggestion of a number of bank notaries, several amendments have been made to this bill, which will practically make Saturday, so far as regards the presentation of commercial paper, an entire holiday."

—The following is from the "Irenaeus Letters" in the Observer: "It is intolerable that God should be mocked with such praise as is offered to him in some of our churches. Not to say anything of it as a matter of taste, to gratify the ear of man, and exalt the affections of the worshiper, there is another light in which it should be viewed, and a light in which it is very seldom viewed by our churches. I refer to the great truth that God deserves better praise than he gets in those temples where little or no attention is paid to the culture of sacred music. If that consideration were imprinted on the hearts of Christians, they would from principle spend time and money in qualifying themselves and others to sustain this part of public worship with spirit and understanding."

—While Bismarck is "going to Canossa," and Emperor William sending a golden cross to the pope in appreciation of his services as umpire between Spain and Germany in the affair of the Caroline Islands, France is making steady progress in the direction of church disestablishment. The committee on public business has reported to the Assembly a proposition for the abrogation of the relation existing between Church and State. The measure is based on the broad ground of liberty of conscience as an inalienable right, which it is claimed does not exist under the concords, though the State supports all sects impartially, except the Free Church, a small body which declines all aid, on principle. In the present disposition of the French people, the measure is likely to pass.—Congregationalist.